Hey Everybody, Let’s Ignore “International Burn a Koran Day”

When I was a kid and a bee would fly near me, my mom would insist that, instead of freaking out, I ignore it and it would eventually go away. This is a familiar principle: your younger sibling bothering you? Ignore him and he’ll go away. Angry comments flaming your blog? Ignore them and they’ll go away.

Sometime this works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the bee stings you anyways, or your younger brother is amazingly persistent, or your ego gets in the way and you enter the comment fray.

There’s also the possibility that ignoring a situation, rather than making it better, will actually make it worse. But that’s just part of the inherent risk of ignoring a problem. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we take this risk when it comes to “International Burn a Koran Day.” Let’s ignore it. Let’s supplement the time and energy that we could waste further worrying about this very small pack of nutjobs by doing something a bit more meaningful like, I don’t know, remembering the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Conveniently, the 9th anniversary of that tragic day falls on the same date as “Burn a Koran Day.” Maybe we should take advantage of this remarkable coincidence to focus our thoughts on something more substantial.

Now, of course, as I said above, there is a risk here. What if ignoring it doesn’t make t go away? What if the problem gets worse? Yes, there’s a chance that this is only the beginning of a huge national trend toward pervasive nutjobbery, but there’s also the chance that these 30ish crazy individuals are just that – crazy individuals. It’s great that everybody from the National Association of Evangelicals to the Vatican to (most importantly) Angelina Jolie has come out condemning this event. It’s good to know that we’re all on the same page. Let’s take it a step further now. Let’s wrap up patting eachother on the back for our collective condemnation (and sanity) and opt, instead, for ignoring it.